


Some Kind of Monster: Being a Tale of the Captivity of Thor Odinson After the War with Jotunheim

by illwynd



Series: 30 Day OTP Porn Challenge [3]
Category: Norse Religion & Lore, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Blood and Injury, Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Prisoner of War, Rimming, Sexual Slavery, War, and other terrible things, mentions of flesh-eating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-01-13
Packaged: 2018-01-08 10:53:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1131803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illwynd/pseuds/illwynd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor, prince of Asgard, is captured during the second war with Jotunheim, and he is sent to Laufey's youngest son to be broken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the 30 day OTP porn challenge, but I thought it deserved its own space. 
> 
> Prompt: rimming. 
> 
> I would like to emphasize that this fic contains graphic rape of a war prisoner and other terrible things. If that is likely to disturb you, please skip this one. I'd also like to apologize to Thor. Sorry, Thor.

_ His Early Education _

In Thor’s first memory, he knew already that the Jotnar were monsters.

It was during the time of the first great war against Jotunheim, in which Asgard established their dominion and pushed back the destructive Jotun excursions onto other realms. But at that time the king’s first son, Prince Thor, was no more than a tiny boy, small enough to sit at his mother’s feet when she worked upon her loom or to play innocently in the gardens without even a little wooden sword in his hand. He was small enough to be watched over by a nursemaid when his queen and mother was attending to matters of state, for his father was away in the war. He was small enough to cry a little at his great father’s absence and to need to be comforted with tales.

The nursemaid offered such tales as answered all the mysteries of his young life.

“The king, your father, protects all the realms—that is why he is away,” the woman explained, sitting Thor upon her knee and rubbing a hand on his back to stop his tears. “The foe that he fights—you remember the tales I have told you of the Jotun monsters of the icy, withered realms? Your father fights them, to protect us. To protect _you_.”

Thor frowned, worriedly, and the nursemaid tapped a fond finger on the tip of his nose. “It is said they enjoy the taste of us. If they were here, they would gobble you right up. That is why you should not cry at your father’s absence: he is away for our good. And he will return swiftly enough.”

The nursemaid had then let him clamber down and run off to play more amid the flowers of the warm, bright garden. He had indeed done so, finding a bush of fragrant white peonies to sit beneath, but in his hiding spot he shivered, and the blue shadows of the flowers were darker than ever before, and as he peered through them at the palace he envisioned monsters in the places he had always felt most safe.

Nightmares came after, in which he fought monsters. The nightmares grew worse for a time even after the war ended, when his father returned home with a ragged white bandage over one eye.

He soon enough asked for a wooden sword.

_ The Youth Grows in Skill _

There was peace for centuries afterward, and the young prince grew. He was the son of Odin, who is known for wisdom and knowledge, so the youth was instructed in many areas, which he learned as best he could. But he was the prince of a warrior people as well, and the son of Odin who is better known as a god of war, so he studied also many arts of battle and became quickly adept at them all.

There was peace during those times, but the memory of war lingered in tales told over cups of ale around the feasting table after the fires of the hall had burned low.

On one occasion, Thor and his young group of friends—warriors and shieldmaidens all, brave and strong, who loved Thor for his easy smile and his true heart—were seated not far from a gathering of older warriors.

They sat near enough to overhear that other conversation, in which Tyr, one of the older gods, recounted the battle in which his hand was lost.

Thor fell oddly silent, his brow knitted, his hand tight around his drinking horn. Rain began to drum on the shields that shingled the hall. Thunder rattled the windows. His friends noticed his disquiet and, knowing well the fierceness of his temper, attempted to cheer him out of it with plans of an upcoming adventure, but his spirits would not be lifted.

He was heard to mutter the word “monsters,” vowing that if ever war came between their realms again while he was able to fight in it, it would not end with the Jotnar only closed up on their ruined world.

A short while later, one of his friends assisted him as he stumbled home, the cold of the storm still whipping across Asgard.

_ The Return of War to the Aesir People _

By the time the conflict between realms flared into new life, Thor was known by all as the mightiest warrior in Asgard, his power and force perfectly mirrored by the great hammer he wielded—less inclined to finesse than the swordsman, heedless of the nearness of the enemy in the way no archer or lancer had ever been.

When the armies of Asgard rode out, he was at their head, fearless and gleaming bright as gold under the noontime sun, and he carried all their hopes with them, and all who followed Odin’s commands followed Thor in their hearts.

The prince of the Aesir, the son of Odin, the god of storms… no one could look at him, at the unquenchable fire in his eyes, and believe that anything but victory was possible.

That remained true for quite some time, through many battles that met the Jotnar where they had invaded other realms, pushed them back to their own bounds, pursued them to the icy heart of their world. Even after the tides of the war then turned once more against the Aesir, Thor could still be seen in the thickest part of each battle. The monstrous warriors of Jotunheim, though, towered over him. He still shone bright as gleaming gold, his defiant cries carrying along with the ringing of his hammer as it fell, but now he shone like a light almost overwhelmed.

The ranks of Asgard had no choice but to retrace their path, until they fought upon their own borders once more. Until the monsters spilled into Asgard and across their sunlit fields.

And then the light was very near extinguished.

_ The Capture of Thor Odinson _

The thunder of battle had receded only slightly, and the Odinson was fallen upon his knees in the mud when he was confronted for the first time with the Jotun king.

“You are defeated,” the massive giant said, looming above. “Your realm will follow in your example.”

But Thor was the son of Odin, a prince of this realm, so he did not look up. He would not give the monster the pleasure of seeking any plea for mercy in his eyes; it would find none, for he did not fear pain. He was already lightheaded and chilled from the loss of blood from many wounds across his body, but that pain had not stopped him from fighting on. He had stopped only when his legs had buckled and his arms given out, the injuries too many and his last strength failing.

He would go to Valhalla soon, whether the brutes dealt him another blow or not. So he glared into the distance, hatred in his eyes, inviting one. 

“You are conquered,” the Jotun king said over him with satisfaction. “All the realms will recognize our might when I show them the prince of Asgard in chains.”

Yet for all his defiance, Thor could not stop the shout that escaped when the Jotun king reached to take him by the hair, wrenching him upright from his slump. Every gaping cut in his sodden flesh seemed to throb and bleed anew. He had seen many Jotun faces, had _smashed_ many with his hammer, but this was the face of the monster that had put out Odin’s eye, and that hate that flowed back to him through that gaze was like venom.

With difficulty, Thor summoned the power to spit, but the Jotun king only shoved him back to wipe the moisture from his cheek and turned away.

Thor sat reeling in the gritty, sticky mud, and the sky spun overhead, a deep grey creeping in from the edges that had nothing to do with clouds. He shifted on his knees, feeling the blood flow faster with the motion, oozing painfully with each heartbeat to soak the inside of his armor.

He almost thought he heard the Valkyries’ song through the dull ringing in his ears. He could barely hear it when the Jotun king spoke again, calling upon one of the guards who stood nearby, spear in hand.

“Send him to Loki. Instruct my son to break him, on my order.” Then, glancing again over his shoulder at the captive, Laufey added, “and send for healers. He will not die before I command it.”

Those were the last words Thor heard before the sky tilted upward and the darkness came finally down.

_ An Unwilling Healing and a Brief Journey  _

Had Thor not known better, he would have believed that the next days that passed were a nightmare and he still a tiny child huddled under the blankets after one too many gruesome tales. But he did know better, and he did not expect to wake from it.

Consciousness returned to him the first time as the Jotun healers began to doctor him, and he needed no remembered tales to bring the sour sting of horror flushing over him at the prospect of their barbarous medicine. The sight and smell of the monster that approached him were enough, the jar of foul, oozing salve in one hand and the red-hot brand in the other. Thor stared for only the briefest moment before he began to struggle, bellowing and bucking and trying to kick with his useless leg, trying to punch with his shattered arm, but he was quickly surrounded by more of the beasts and held down beyond his strength to fight.

And still he struggled, until one of them pressed a wet and bitter-smelling cloth to his face, covering his mouth and nose until he had to breathe.

The darkness once more came down.

When he woke again, it was to the feeling of motion, soft and swelling and rhythmic, reminiscent of the ocean waves. Soft furs were beneath him. His hands were folded on his breast. His armor and clothing had been replaced with a simple brown robe. He spent a dazed moment believing, oddly, that they had killed him with their attempts to seal his wounds and that this was his funeral boat.

Then he heard their voices and noticed the thin, cloth sky and realized that he was in fact being carried in some sort of litter. He could hear sounds of fighting—but they were distant now. They were carting him away from the line of battle, back through their vast encampment. Perhaps back to their own realm.

If he did not escape now, he might lose the chance forever.

So he tried. And fell on his face, thudding hard to the ground when his legs gave out beneath him. Too weak, too disoriented to stand. Sweat pouring from his skin. Each wound seemed to swell and throb and burn, and nausea rose with the pain, making him heave, and all he could do was lie panting, waiting for it to end.  

There was the sound of rough laughter all around at the sight of him, and it was apparently decided that this was a fine excuse for a break in their march.

After some time, one of them—a huge warrior twice Thor’s size, ugly, with a crooked nose—bent over his prostrate form, yanked him upright by the hair, and forced a cup to his lips.

Thor did not take this for a kindness, but his mouth was dry enough that he gulped reflexively anyway.

After taking the cup away, the Jotun remained crouched over him, looking him up and down with a sort of curious malevolence before sneering and turning away, and soon after Thor was hauled back onto the litter, which was lifted as the little company started off again. 

He did not understand the significance of the looks he’d been given until the conversation started up among his captors.

In low, nervous whispers they mused about what fate would greet the Aesir prince. What _Loki_ would do with him.

Thor remembered that name from the Jotun king’s mouth, just before he had fallen unconscious. But while the Jotnar obviously knew who Thor was, Thor had never heard of this son of Laufey’s. Though almost delirious from the loss of blood, he could not keep his ears from perking up in mingled dread and curiosity.

“Loki likes it better when they start out whole,” one of the guards said in a low voice, garnering a chorus of grunts in agreement. “That’s why…”

This faded into a growling whisper too low to hear, and the hairs rose on the back of Thor’s neck.

_He will gobble you up. The monsters like the taste of Aesir flesh_ , his childhood nursemaid’s voice hummed to him as he rested unwillingly against the furs of the litter. Then Thor began to shiver as the sky through the thin curtain grew dark and dim. And unconsciousness fell upon him once more.

_ The Princes’ Introduction  _

In the morning, Thor was brought to an elaborate tent at the rear of the Jotun encampment; it was large enough to house several families in comfort, its green panels edged in black-and-gold braid bright under the sun.

There, forced to his knees by the harsh hands of the Jotun guards—or rather, thrust there after having been hauled from the bed of the litter, his leg still unable to take his weight—he met the son of which Laufey had spoken, the monster who the other monsters feared.

But the face that peered at him, eyes glinting with cleverness and sharp with command, was wholly unlike the brute-faced Jotnar Thor knew. His features were fine and comely-fair, his lustrous hair was black and soft.  Most surprising, the Jotun prince was not a giant at all—he stood only Thor’s own height, or near enough.

Thor stared in awe, uncomprehending and disbelieving. But he was not one to mistake beauty for gentleness, and the fear that had been growing in him all the while bloomed as Loki smiled at him. 

 “Bring him inside,” Loki told the guards, voice low through his curving lips. “I’ll take him from there.”

_ The Start of His Captivity _

Outrage quickly overwhelmed his fear.

Thor was the son of Odin, the god of storms, the prince of the Aesir, and he would not bow. It was almost worse, though, to be dragged into the Jotun prince’s tent, deposited on a camp bed in a section hidden from the rest of the tent by gauzy curtains, and left there alone for hours. Insultingly alone, like a forgotten toy, as if he had not slain thousands of these beasts before they won their chance victory over him

“The prince’s tent is well guarded,” one of the monsters who had left him there had grunted. “So don’t try anything. Not that I think you’d get far anyway.”

Of course it was true that he could barely stand on his own, and though he entertained the idea of trying to crawl to freedom, he couldn’t quite make himself do it.

So he lay there weakly, listening to the noise of the encampment and occasional nearer voices and imagining what the little frost giant meant to do to him. The long delay meant that he had time to stir himself into a frothing rage before the Jotun prince at last reappeared, slipping in between the folds of deep green cloth.

“I do not care what you do to me,” Thor snapped before the Jotun could say a word. “I do not care how you mistreat me—it will gain you nothing. I will not submit to the will of monsters.”

 “So I’ve heard, among other things,” his captor said, one dark eyebrow raised in a perfect curve. “I’ve heard you fight magnificently, even if you don’t know when to surrender. I would have liked to have seen it.”

Thor bared his teeth at him. “I would gladly have shown you.”

This did not have the desired effect; Loki only chuckled under his breath. Thor’s anger burned hotter.

“Coward,” he spat.

The Jotun prince did not take the bait. He seemed entirely unconcerned, giving a lackluster shrug as he took a seat beside the camp bed, his pose relaxed, his hands propped on his knees.

“I’m meant to break you,” Loki said after a moment. “But this is no place to do it in, and you are obviously in no condition for us to begin any such thing—you look already half broken, in body if not in spirit. Perhaps in a week we’ll have this war close enough to won that you and I will be able to go back to Jotunheim. I hope you can keep yourself occupied in the meantime.”

Thor made no answer, glaring back in silence, an unsettled feeling fermenting in his core. And that time he was glad when he was again left alone.

_ The Prisoner’s Duty _

He waited only until he had healed enough to stand unaided before attempting to flee. When the tent seemed silent and empty—he could only guess at comings and goings by the sounds of movement nearby, but he did his best—he made his break, propelled through a crimson fog of agony by force of will alone. He fled the tent and limped unsteadily between the smaller, rougher tents of the Jotun rear lines.

There was a cry of alarm before a minute had passed.

He was dragged back by guards on either side, their clawed hands digging cruelly into the muscles of his arms. One—the one with a gout of blood streaming down from his nose where Thor’s head had hit it—gripped him tighter as the Jotun prince emerged from the shadowy inside of the tent, giving a little shake of his head as he took in the sight before him.

“Would you like us to break his legs?” the guard growled, sounding far too eager. “Then he could provide no further nuisance.”

Loki gave the guard a shocked smile. “No, I wouldn’t like that, and neither would you. You’re not to harm him any more than necessary. Even if he gives you cause.”

The guards grumbled in response, and Loki used the moment to look Thor over, assessing, taking in the sight of his new scrapes and bruises. Thor set his jaw, defiant.

“Do you want us to bring a healer?” one of the guards— _not_ the one with the broken nose, notably—asked.

“No, that won’t be necessary,” said the Jotun prince, dismissing the guards with a wave of his hand.

A few minutes later found Thor in the same low cot, though, a box open beside it and Loki bending over him, treating his wounds himself.

“That must hurt,” Loki mused. As if on an instinct for sniffing out pain, the Jotun prince had swiftly noticed him favoring his wrist, and now he was feeling at the stiff, swollen joint, massaging it with his fingertips.

Thor glared at the floor, hating that the monster was touching him, and at the same time steeling himself for more of the rough treatments the warrior Jotnar had inflicted upon him before. He was not expecting at all the clear, bluish salve, herb-scented and fresh, that Loki smoothed across his skin after he had satisfied himself that nothing seemed to be broken or out of place. It began to work almost instantly, cooling the burning throb and dulling the pain.

Loki smirked at Thor’s gasp of surprise.  

“We monsters do have good medicine, when it pleases us to use it,” the Jotun prince said. “When the patient is worth our while.”

*

Thor began to suspect that he was being laughed at.

Two more attempts he made that ended in him being dragged back battered and exhausted, and each time the little Jotun only shook his head and sighed and smiled. The last of them had been just after nightfall, when the tent was silent and—Thor thought—empty, and the darkness should have concealed him.

"You're only harming yourself more," the Jotun prince said.

Thor's wounded leg throbbed. One of the guards had remembered it and struck him there, bringing him to his knees with white lights flashing behind his eyelids. He gritted his teeth.

"Do you not have a war to fight?" Thor snarled in response. "Why do you not go and do so?"

"Oh, I am," Loki grinned.

Thor had been allowed to believe he was slipping away unseen, a bright blade of hope being doused again in an instant. He sagged as the guard nearly carried him back inside.

Sometimes, as the hateful hours passed, Loki came to look him over, appearing from behind the draping cloth all around and giving him an appraising look, dropping a few casual words on the progress of the war (surely meant to dishearten him, though Thor did not let it). The next time he did so, Thor eyed him with new wariness.

But whatever game this was, Thor still had no intention of allowing it to shake his resolve. The duty of a captive was to escape, and he was nearly healed now, steadier on his feet. At last he would have a fighting chance.

*

The final time he tried to escape, he had been growing aware of a clatter unlike the usual sounds of mustering soldiers beyond the walls of the tent. He soon found out why, and as he dangled struggling between the pair of Jotnar that had caught him, he took his chance to glance around at the array of carts and beasts, giants carrying massive trunks with brass fittings over their shoulders, misshapen tents sinking like fast-melting lumps of snow under an early warm sun.

When Thor was brought back, Loki was waiting with glinting, silver shackles and chains clinking in his hand.

“Oh, don't look like that. You _are_ a prisoner, you can hardly complain about being treated like one, even if I've been kind enough to spare you this part of it while you healed,” the Jotun prince said. “But now Laufey has given me leave to have my retinue break camp and return home, now that the war is nearly over.”

Then and there, Loki affixed the gleaming metal onto him, on his ankles and wrists, accomplishing it quickly and without a fuss. Without a show, Thor would have said, except that it was done out in the open where anyone could see. Thor answered by keeping still and allowing it, refusing to draw any more attention or sacrifice his dignity for Loki’s amusement.

 “Say goodbye to Asgard,” Loki added, one hand stroking along Thor’s cheek almost tenderly.

Thor narrowed his eyes.

_ The March  _

They departed the next day.

After Loki’s tent had come down in a puddle of heavy fabric, Thor sat beside the waiting drays and wagons, watching soldiers thump busily across the dark ground with various loads, and then a little later, after the sun was halfway up the sky and the morning chill had burned away, he walked beside the somewhat nicer coach in which Loki rode. He had no choice, really. The Jotun prince had chained him to it.

“It’s only fair,” he’d said, grinning. “I’ve hidden you away all this time. I think my men would like to catch a little glimpse of our prize.”

Thor had not deigned to give this an answer, only glaring down at the ground. He had gotten good at not answering. It seemed a useful strategy, under the circumstances.

Keeping his eyes on the ground below his feet was useful also in that it made it easier to pretend as he trudged along, to take in the familiar scene and look at it no further; he had taken part in many marches. He had even marched into Jotunheim before. He remembered feeling the cold of that icy realm coming down on his skin and turning to look at his fellows, giving an exaggerated shiver and pulling a face full of disdain. Only beasts could survive in such an inhospitable climate. It was no wonder that the giants who resided there were so barbarous, so brutish. There had been no doubt at all in Thor’s mind that the war would be a swift one, for the Aesir would surely put the monsters quickly in their place.

This time, Thor could feel the soldiers all around gawking at him. With every silvery clink of the chains, he could feel it. One of them likely would never again find his nose straight when he looked in the mirror, thanks to a collision with Thor’s head. But even that ugly creature was free and victorious.

“I’ll let you ride up here with me if you will actually speak, for once.”

Thor looked up at the window of the coach to see Loki smiling down at him. Despite the wryness of his words, his look was open and welcoming—so Thor had a choice of trudging along wearily in his chains, watched by hundreds of giants… or sitting beside his captor in relative comfort and seclusion. And having those same hundreds know that he had chosen to do so.

A few minutes later, Thor climbed up.

*

He sat awkwardly on the bench across from the Jotun prince, a little cup in front of him filled with a clear, bitter liquid. He’d only tipped enough onto his tongue to get the taste of it, and it had left his mouth burning.

Loki, who had downed his portion in one gulp, had laughed at that.

“It’s meant to loosen your tongue,” he’d said. Then, with a sigh, “I know you’re not used to being held captive, but I have not been so terrible to you as to deserve all this silence, have I? What harm can there be in just speaking to each other a little?”

Thor looked over at him—he wanted to say that he had no interest in speaking to him, now or ever. But the drink had brought a little flush to the Jotun’s cheeks, and such a thing looked strange indeed on a giant. And anyway, he’d agreed when he took Loki’s offer. So Thor gripped the cup resolutely between his bound hands, put it to his mouth, and swallowed. It burned across his lips and it burned on the way down, and the heat spread out through him like a hum. He felt—it wasn’t the first bloom of intoxication, not really. But it did make him a little giddy, a little lightheaded, and he said the first thing it came in his mind to say.

“Why are you so different from the other Jotnar?”

Loki gave a little noise of false surprise. “So different? Tell me, in what way am I so different?”

“You’re…” Thor made a little gesture that was intended to take up the entirety of Loki’s form.

Loki interrupted this, leaning forward to pour them both another cupful. “I am small for a giant? Yes, I suppose I am. But I have other qualities that make up for that, as I am sure you can imagine by now.” Loki paused. “And what of you, prince of the Aesir?”

“What of me?” It was easier to swallow the second time around, though the burn was just as much.

“How did you become the rare creature that you are?”

“I am not—”

“Ah, but you are,” Loki said, shaking a finger. “Anyone could see that there is no pain that will ever unmake you. I can tell. I have broken many men with no more than the fear of pain to come… but you, no. I could take you apart and it would do no good at all. So what has made you so different from your kin?”

The liquor burn was still hot and spreading in Thor’s guts, but now it fought against a squirming chill; this monster was sitting there smiling at him while telling him how many he had tortured.

Thor frowned. “I am as I have always been,” he muttered.

Loki laughed, a pleased sound, and the coach rumbled on toward Jotunheim.

Thor was a prince of the Aesir, a mighty warrior, a god of storms, the son of Odin, and as the coach’s wheels rumbled across the bridge, he resolved once more that even in the monster’s own realm, no matter what was done to him, he would not be broken.

It began to grow cold. Then colder, and colder still. The air was white, and the patch of darkening sky that Thor could spy through the window had the clarity of midwinter, the first stars shining out like tiny white gems, too distant to measure.

Loki, who had long since fallen into a pensive silence, gazing out the opposite window and only occasionally glancing Thor’s way with a curious expression on his face, then offered Thor another drink, and he was glad to take it—glad of the warmth, even though he had already availed himself of a heavy white fur that had been draped over the bench.

This time, though, only minutes after it passed his lips, he found his eyes slipping shut and a haze coming down in his mind, his tongue already too heavy to protest when he realized what had happened.

Cold hands caught him when he slumped over, but he was already fast asleep and so was not aware of them at all. 

***


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the response so far! Hope you guys like this next bit; non-con ahoy!

_ A Palace Beneath the Ice _

Thor came to with a jolt.

He had been dreaming of being captured by the monsters from his childhood nursemaid’s tales, dreams in which he tried to fight and was overpowered, tried to run and was caught, and finally only lay trussed and shuddering with horror as giants loomed over him and poked at him, licking their lips and murmuring to one another how tender and delicious he would surely be. It was a nightmare he’d had many times as a child, and in the brief moment between its dissipation and the return of waking reason, he told himself it was impossible. They would not get him. He was safe. But then he opened his eyes.

It was cold, though not terribly so, and he lay wrapped in the same soft, thick white fur, staring up at a ceiling of blue ice, carven and glittering with light and with a terrible beauty.

The light was enough that as he turned his head, he could see the line of his chains emerging from beside the low pallet and snaking over to the icy wall, where a few metal spikes had been driven to hold them fast.

So this was where he ended up. A room in a dungeon, chained to the wall…

But some sound made him turn his head to the other side, and there, only feet away, was a bed, large and princely, with a beautifully woven coverlet of blue and green. Upon it Loki lay stretched out, propped on his side, just watching.

Perhaps not a dungeon.

“Good,” the Jotun prince said. “You’re awake. I’ve been waiting.”

“You drugged me,” Thor said reproachfully.

Loki nodded. “I had to, to bring you here.”

Thor frowned.

Loki sighed and went on, in a patient, matter-of-fact tone. “I couldn't very well let you see how we got here. We’re under the ice. Quite well hidden; we learned after the last war.”

A palace hidden under the ice, hidden from view and from battle.  Thor thought of the sparse villages on the surface that he and his father’s army had laid waste to in the war, and how they had been sure that there were no other sources of strength for the Jotnar to draw upon—a few days when Thor had honestly believed the war was already won and the giants had just not conceded it yet.

This news, though, was also bad for his chances of escape.

Thor’s eyes were drawn again to the spikes in the wall that held his chains.

 “Yes, Thor Odinson,” Loki said, breaking through into Thor’s slow comprehension. “You are here to stay, I’m afraid.”

*

Thor tried his strength against his chains as soon as he was alone. He had not been willing to do so when Loki was watching, but now that he had no audience, he strained against them. Sweat rose on his skin and dampness grew hot and then chill in his eyes. The metal links shrieked and rattled. He yanked against the metal spikes but they did not budge. He twisted and pulled but it made no difference.

“You’ve said you know you will not break me with pain,” he had snarled at his captor before the Jotun prince had left him there. He did not truly think the Jotun prince meant not to torture him; the monster likely only meant to lull him for a time. “What do you intend to do, then? Do you expect that keeping me chained will make me pliant?”

“No, of course not,” Loki had answered. “But it may protect my guards from your escape attempts. That was one thing in our camp; quite another here.”

A few hours later, Thor was wholly exhausted. The Jotun prince came back to find Thor lying there like that, panting and recovering himself, and he laughed softly, his eyes half-lidded.

“I’m terribly sorry. I’ve enchanted them to be unbreakable. Did I not mention?”

Thor found himself surprised that his captor did not torture him then, either. Loki only fixed the chains beneath the pallet, tight enough that all he could do was lie splayed there. And that was apparently all it took for the Jotun prince to be able to go to sleep safely mere feet away from his prisoner, for that was precisely what he did.

_ Within the Prince’s Chambers _

The clink of chains woke him in the morning as Loki let out the slack in them, crouching over him and rubbing a little at his wrists.

“Rise and shine,” he said. “Not too cold, are you?”

Oddly, Thor wasn’t. He shook his head; he had wondered _why_ it was that the prince’s chambers seemed warmer than anywhere else in this forsaken realm, but he wasn’t about to ask. It wasn’t for his comfort, certainly.

“Good.” Loki gave his hands one more brief squeeze and then stood. “I’ll have some food sent up in a while, but I’m not used to eating so early in the day. I hope you don’t mind if I get some work done in the meantime.”

For the next hour, the scratching of pen on paper buzzed at the edge of Thor’s hearing, and occasionally he glanced over to where the Jotun prince sat showing Thor his back, his dark head bent over his desk intently. Then he did send for food, a Jotun boy appearing outside the door at his summons and running off again with the instructions Loki had given him. A few minutes later the door swung open again, this time revealing two Jotun women. It was the first time Thor had seen any such, but it was unmistakable by their shape and their dress and even by their dull, broad faces that were nonetheless more delicately built than those of the soldiers.

The thing that troubled Thor, though, was that they—like the boy—kept their eyes down as they carried in their trays of food. They appeared uncomfortable—though they towered over both Thor and the Jotun prince, they seemed skittish and ill at ease, as if they would rather have been on any other duty but that. Servants in Asgard did not behave that way—they offered proper respect and deference to their masters, but they were not fearful or cowed. As Thor watched the women set the trays down, he wanted to ask them what it was they feared. Whether mistreatment was the lot in life of a Jotun servant… or whether perhaps it was only their prince who discomfited them so.

Thor could not get the question out of his mind after the Jotun women left, as Loki gestured to him to take what he liked from the miniature banquet that had been set on the table. (He had been eating Jotun food for days—but that had been soldiers’ food, much the same everywhere, and probably half of it stolen from Asgardian farms along their route anyway. This was different. But edible, and none of it any worryingly unrecognizable meats.)

He remembered the whispers of the Jotnar who had carried him, wounded and newly captured, to Loki’s tent. There had been the tone in their voices of those who had heard _tales_. And the servants here, so fearful of the little Jotun prince that they practically shook as they carried out such a simple and unobjectionable task as bringing him his breakfast.

But as yet, Loki had done nothing to him except chain him and ignore him, and smile at him as they broke bread together.

Thor did not understand what this was about, but he began to grow unsettled as well. He told himself he would not become complacent. If Loki meant to befriend him, it would not work. He hated his captor. He was being held here against his will by monsters. By one monster in particular, and by the looks of it the worst of them all, no matter how different he seemed.

At that moment, the monster's beautiful face was slack with pleasure at the taste of a sweet dark berry from his plate. And if Thor had been free, he would have slain him where he sat. The knife just out of his reach on the table, blood pouring out like the juice that wetted his lip. Or with his bare hands, choking until his eyes rolled back in his head.

Loki smiled wider as he caught Thor’s eye, as if he could see the lay of his thoughts.

Thor quickly looked away.

*

That night, his captor again poured two glasses.

When Thor did not get up from his seat on the pallet, Loki took both glasses in his hands and sauntered over to extend one to him, but Thor only gave the glass a wary look and his captor a tense glare.

This made Loki laugh. “I have not drugged it this time. I promise.”

Thor did not reply.

“Are we back to this?” Loki sighed. “Think, please—what reason could I possibly have for wanting you unconscious now?”

That, in fact, was what Thor was worried about. As the hours had passed, he had asked himself again and again what the Jotun prince might mean to do to him. Then at one point it had occurred to him that he, a war prisoner, was being kept in the prince’s bedchamber. Chained up next to his bed.

That could not mean what he thought it meant. Of course he had heard stories about the Frost Giants coupling like beasts, but…

Loki was stubbornly standing there, holding out the cup of liquor, waiting for Thor to take it. Those same fine, beautiful features that had shocked Thor so at the first sight of him now looked rakish, his dark eyes glinting with assurance and his lips just barely curved, like a sparkling blade.

“You have my solemn vow that it is not drugged,” the Jotun prince coaxed. “You’re already here; I’ll have much more amusement of you awake. I merely want to speak to you, and I’m sure we’ll both be a little more comfortable this way.”

Thor stared at the cup. Loki stared at him.

His captor merely wanted to talk. Nothing terrible would happen. Surely, nothing terrible would happen to him tonight.

Thor reached and in one swift motion swallowed his first mouthful down.

*

“I want to know why you call us monsters,” Loki said.

Thor’s cup was empty again, his belly warm. He frowned at his captor in incomprehension.

“You’ve said it many times. I’m intrigued: what is it that makes my people monsters and not merely your people’s enemies? There is a difference, you know.”

A flood of memories. Stories and songs and tales, pulsing in his mind, echoing in his ears.

He heard his own voice. “I say it because you _are_ ,” he slurred. “Frost giants… have no warm feeling, no kindness… they couple like beasts and leave their weakest out to die.”

Thor barely noticed the flicker on his captor’s face; he was far too intent on speaking the next words.

“They… they eat…” he trailed off with a shudder, feeling the old horror all over again, as Loki watched him in amusement. “It is the first thing I remember. My very first memory is of being told that your kind would _eat me_ if they could, feast on my flesh and suck the marrow from my bones.”

Loki was laughing, though. Laughing at him, his eyes sparkling. “So that’s what all this is about?”

“You will not eat me,” Thor snarled drunkenly. “I will _fight_ you if you try.”

“All this hostility, because of something you were told when you were five?”

Thor didn’t answer. The room swam a bit.

“Well, take comfort, little storm god—I have never tasted Aesir flesh. I’m certain of that.”

It was hard not to believe Loki’s words, so earnest and pleasant they sounded. Not to mention how much fiery liquid warmth curled through Thor’s body from the liquor. He felt a little better, or at least he would have, had he not fallen asleep very soon after.

_ The Part That Is Never Told _

Thor was woken by hands on his body. He was still drunk, too drunk to grasp what was going on, but when he tried to sit up, he found that the chains had been drawn taut again and he couldn’t. The first thing he heard was a low whisper.

“You know, ever since you told me that, I’ve been having a craving. I think I would like to taste Aesir flesh.”

Thor's mind was slow and muzzy. But his reaction required little thinking. It was one of instant panic: he fought. He fought and struggled with all his might, brought up short by the chains no matter what he tried, so he thrashed against them heedless to at least make of himself a moving target, too difficult to deal with. He cursed, ears ringing with panic and with the crying of strained metal.

This went on for probably quite some time before he registered the sound of chuckling and realized that the pain he'd feared had not come. Once he had—calming just enough to lie still and dazed—he also realized that somehow, in the struggle, the thick robe and flimsy breeches he’d been dressed in had been tugged away, and the chains had been manipulated somehow so that his ankles were lifted into the air. He bent his knees and curled, trying to twist away, but that only left him more exposed, and all of a sudden he became aware of his captor’s hands on his spread thighs, clutching and kneading.

Thor flushed at how naïve he had been.

He was a mighty warrior, the god of storms, prince of the Aesir, the son of Odin. But there, chained half naked in a Jotun prince’s bedchamber, knees over his head... bare and vulnerable... he had to force himself not to whimper.

He heard Loki’s quiet chuckle just before he felt a sharp nip at the soft inside of Thor’s thigh. He clenched his teeth as he felt a cool nose nudging against his prick where it lay flaccid against his belly, and he hissed when Loki’s tongue scraped against the sensitive skin of his balls. His entire body tensed against his restraints when he felt a light kiss being pressed against a spot just to one side. He almost shouted, though, at the next thing he felt, as the Jotun prince flicked out his tongue to lick Thor where no one had ever licked him before.

The Jotun’s tongue was velvety smooth and surprisingly warm on Thor’s most sensitive skin, and the feeling made him shudder. Especially as Loki continued, lapping across his hole in long, slow strokes, up and down the cleft of his ass.

He had never imagined—no one in Asgard would put their lips on such a dirty place on another’s form.

“Do all you monsters… sully your mouths so with each other?” It was meant to be a haughty insult. In fact it was a gasp.

A little bit of muffled laugher. “No, I'm sure they don't. As you once noted, I'm rather different from the rest of my kin. How lucky for you, then, that you got me.”

The Jotun laved his tongue in a broad circle that burned shame into the center of Thor’s being. He made no answer, but he didn’t have to. No matter what his mind thought—how much he hated what was happening to him and the one doing it—his body was responding. His cock was thickening with each wet lick; he could feel his pulse in his loins, hot and ever quicker.

Loki stroked a finger along Thor’s hardening prick to show that he, too, had noticed, making Thor jump and twitch in his bonds.

“Monster,” Thor hissed in protest, trying to squirm away.

Loki seemed to take this as a challenge, making a little sound of interest against Thor’s tenderest skin and pushing back on his spread thighs. And then he speared the heat of his tongue _inside_ , and Thor could not stop the whimper that time any more than he could stop himself from clutching desperately at the fur on which he lay. 

By the time Loki let up and took a moment to breathe and admire his struggling captive, Thor was shaking with rage. And he was perhaps a few solid strokes away from spilling.

Loki laid his cheek against the soft, bare inside of Thor’s thigh, and his warm breath teased and tickled between Thor’s spread legs, through the thatch of tight gold curls at his root.

“I think you liked that,” he said. “Would you like me to continue?”

Air hissed through Thor’s clenched teeth. His jaws ached with the effort of not screaming.

Loki ignored the lack of answer; he was positioned such that Thor’s cock was right before his eyes, lying swollen and red and leaking on Thor’s belly. Idly Loki let his fingers graze it, let his thumb just barely touch, brushing against the thick vein on the underside, just above Thor’s tight drawn-up balls.

Thor squeezed his eyes shut so that he would not have to see his captor touching him, no matter how good it felt. Loki did not look like the Frost Giants of Thor’s old nightmares, but that made little difference. The delicate curve of his cheekbone, the luster of his black hair, the cleverness of his smile did not make this any better.

Thor was _not_ going to be bedded by a monster, was not going to let this monster believe he was _willing_.

If Loki stuck his tongue up Thor’s ass again, Thor knew he would come, and he could not imagine anything worse. He bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood, but the pain didn’t help any more than the shame had. He wasn’t sure he could resist. All he was aware of was the warm, damp breath, the light, teasing touches along his cock, the weight against his legs. He tried to fight it; it did no good. He could not ignore it. Loki would not let him.

Thor felt himself panting desperately as Loki’s face lowered between his spread thighs again, soft lips kissing him there, licking, sucking…

Loki yanked on the ends of his chains, spreading him wider, leaving him even more vulnerable. And Thor felt a hot tongue plunging inside, deeper than before.

Thor hated himself as he came, twitching against his bonds, a stifled cry stuck in his throat. But he hated his captor more.

Loki did not seem to care, only lying sprawled across Thor’s hips, trailing his fingers through the copious splashes of seed pooling toward Thor’s navel and regarding him with amusement, with a smear of wetness glistening on his chin.

“You taste wonderful,” he said, licking his lips.

But he did nothing more—only let some slack into the chains and let Thor lie flat again, eventually, and removed himself to his own bed nearby. Thor fumed for the rest of the night, wishing more than ever that he had died in battle, never to be brought to this.

_ The Architect _

The next day, Loki found that his prisoner would not so much as look at him, and though he was not quite back to refusing to speak entirely—he seemed too upset to hold himself to that—he gave only growls of one or two words (generally rude ones) in response to any query. He bristled with fury, and Loki could feel storm-air all around him, though it was unable to make much headway in the chill and hostile air of Jotunheim.

He was irresistibly appealing, and the more so the more he resisted.

Loki had suspected as much when he first heard of him. Of course, he had known the names of all the Aesir royalty since he was young—Laufey believed in knowing one’s enemy—but all he had heard before the war was that Odin’s eldest son and heir was an arrogant storm god who had been a mere child during the last conflict between their realms. Which made them both of an age, yet one was born to victory and the other to defeat. The first time he'd learned Thor's name, Loki could remember envying him terribly, envisioning his life and dreaming it was his own.

After the war had begun, he had started hearing rumors from the warriors, rumors in which that name was spoken in tones of awe: they hated him. And Loki had started thinking more and more about this prince of the Aesir, with Jotun blood dripping from his powerful hands, his golden skin sparking with deadly lightning. They were both princes of a royal house, and they were of an age; they could have been brothers. Yet the Norns had dealt them such different fates.

When the Aesir forces pressed their advantage in the ice realm, Loki even hoped that somehow they might meet. But then the fortunes of war had turned, and Loki had insisted upon following his father’s army as they dogged the Asgardians’ heels back to their own shining realm.

He had begun to think of a plan.

“If you ever have Odin’s heir at your mercy, you might give him to me,” Loki had said to Laufey in confidence one night. “If you truly want to claim a victory over these Aesir, you’ll need to break their spirits. I can think of no faster way to demoralize them than seeing their champion destroyed.”

Laufey had eyed him, coldly considering. “Perhaps.”

Loki had not mentioned it again, knowing better than to press his luck with his king and father. All he could do was hope.

But he had not been disappointed, and now he had that stubborn, unruly, beautiful creature he’d heard so much about chained beside his bed.

For a little while that day Loki pretended to do other work, fully aware of the burning blue eyes glaring at everything but him, every outraged line of Thor’s body screaming his utter disdain for Loki’s very existence in that place. He was being so intently ignored that it almost filled the room like a fog.

But that wouldn’t do, and it wouldn’t do to let him stew too long on the insult he’d been dealt before offering him another. What Thor needed, Loki decided, was a steady stream of such treatment, filthy and objectionable things to offend his sense of propriety and pleasure his body. More kisses to that place he found so filthy to force him shivering to climax, all his beautiful strength straining and squirming at being treated so by a monster. Thor was determined to protest, to never give in. Loki would make sure he had plenty to complain about.

The frustration Loki had suffered after that first taste—the hours he had spent hard afterward  but refusing to do anything about it himself, looking over at the thunder god frowning in his sleep and enjoying the vicious misery of his own pent-up need, the aching fullness of his balls—that certainly had nothing to do with this notion.

Loki felt a thrum of heat in his loins as he got up from his desk and strode over toward the pallet by the bed. Thor tried to continue ignoring him, but he found it impossible to do with Loki’s belly at his eye level, standing directly before him, immovable as a wall.

Loki waited, smiling in anticipatory pleasure. Thor’s gaze flickered up and then quickly away again.

“I wonder if your nursemaid ever said anything about the size of the monsters’ appetites rather than just the nature of them,” Loki said, “because I find that I am hungry again.”

*

Loki did, truly, like the taste of him. He wasn’t sure whether it was the taste of Aesir skin or just the taste of Thor, but it was salt and lightning and musk and it made his mouth water.

Even better, though, he liked the resistance Thor continued to put up. Loki's captive tried at first to remain unaffected; when that failed he tried to cover his moans with snarls. He squirmed as Loki licked him, seeming just barely to hold himself back from writhing against Loki’s tongue. And when, this time, Loki shifted upward to swallow down his straining cock while rubbing his fingertips softly around the wet opening below, Thor’s entire body jolted.

With Thor’s thick cock in his mouth Loki craned his neck to look up, and he saw the Aesir prince with his head thrown back, his chained hands tightly clenched in the furs, his teeth clamped down on his lip. Still resisting. Refusing to give in.

Loki slipped a finger into him and Thor’s hips moved but he was not conquered. He came, his seed spurting down Loki’s throat, and Loki heard him choking back every groan until it sounded like he was being strangled. Thor simply would not admit defeat. And Loki loved it. He felt almost intoxicated as he crawled up the Asgardian’s slack body and settled between his spread legs, gazing down at his dazed eyes. His twitching prick prodded against the junction of the god’s thighs; with one hand he reached down and rubbed the head against the saliva-slicked hole that waited for him, warm and ready.

“Do you want to call me a monster again?” Loki asked, slurring the words.

His captive yanked uselessly against his chains. “I will kill you for this,” he growled, completely unbreakable and simply daring Loki to try.

Loki’s lust boiled and he thrust forward, pushing inside in one smooth motion.

*

Loki was far too short on patience by then to wait after the first intrusion... but Thor’s body tensed from the unfamiliar stretch, and it stayed that way. His brow twisted in untempered discomfort and air hissed through his teeth at the pain; he turned his head aside to stare at the wall, refusing to give Loki the satisfaction.

The problem was that this reaction was _not_ satisfying. It was resistance, but it didn't please Loki like the rest had, and he felt himself slowing his thrusts before he even realized he meant to. It was agony to let the bliss of that hot clench fade, but he couldn't help it.

He slowed, rubbed gentling hands on Thor’s hips. He watched the man’s brow until it began to smooth again. He stayed buried within his captive's body but kept still, waiting and smoothing his hands along his chest until the glassy look left Thor's eyes and hardened into something else. And then, when he did move, it was only in a slow, sensual wave, the slightest little pulses of his hips, until he felt Thor’s cock began to stiffen between them once more. Only then did he really relax and begin to enjoy his captive again, indulging in the pleasure he'd been waiting for.

He put one hand to Thor's jaw and turned his face upward, making him watch as Loki drowned in the pleasure of him and letting himself see the anger in his stormy eyes, building steadily as his body betrayed him.

He wasn’t quite sure what had come over him, why he had held back. But no matter what it was, he liked this much better, fucking Thor steadily, the Asgardian’s body warm and delicious beneath him and softer now that he had relaxed. Thor’s prick was fully hard, though, and Loki grasped it. He ground his hips against his captive’s and drank the flares of anger that lit his eyes. This lovely, furious storm god that Loki had wanted since the first time he'd heard of him.

The perfection of it made him come shamefully quickly.

Afterward, as he lay gasping atop the Aesir prince (who huffed at the contact), he had an idea, and he pushed himself up… only to lower his mouth between Thor’s legs again.

Thor sputtered in outrage as Loki put his tongue to his captive’s well-fucked hole, licking and sucking until he could taste the seed he’d spilled there. He put his hands to the tender smoothness of Thor’s upturned thighs and savored.

Thor gave a moan of helpless pleasure.

Loki smiled.  

*

_ The Origins of the Monster _

One morning a week later, Loki returned from reluctantly attending to princely duties and shook his captive awake.

Thor had been burrowed under his furs, twitching in his sleep, and he blinked his way blearily out of his dreams.

“What do you want of me?” he grumbled.

Their relations had not much improved, but Loki had not supposed they really would, under the circumstances. The Aesir prince's life had always been so charmed that he would remain strong and unbroken through far more than this, yet Loki knew he was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. When he turned his ice-blue gaze upon Loki it was one full of utter loathing. He made no more effort to hide it than Loki did to conceal his pleasure at Thor’s continued protests.

“I have tidings from your realm,” Loki answered, smiling.

Thor gave him a scowl that said he would not believe a word from his mouth, but Loki ignored this.

“They are calling the war won, your forces broken and scattered. We have taken your great city, and your family’s throne has been toppled. Not all of them were killed, though. It is said your father escaped, and one of your young brothers has yet to be found as well.”

“And my mother?”

“I have heard nothing,” Loki shrugged. “Was she likely to have joined in the battle?”

The silence that followed was heavy, and Loki heard himself breaking it, telling his prisoner that the citizenry would remain mostly unmolested, as the Jotun armies would not care what they did so long as they were not fighting. Asgard would become vassal to Jotunheim, but it would make little difference, in a practical sense. No giants wanted to live there.

He wasn’t sure if Thor was listening anymore, though. He had one hand across his eyes, though he gave no other sign of tears, only sitting there, very still.   

Loki sprawled across the bed to watch him.

Just when he thought Thor would never make any reply to this at all, he spoke, hand falling away from eyes that were rimmed in red but somehow dry.

“She was a shieldmaiden in her youth,” he said flatly.

“Oh?” Loki replied.

“My mother. She taught me to hold a sword when I first asked for one.” _So she may well have joined the fight._

Thor swallowed, his shoulders slumping, staring at nothing—or at memories he did not care to share, thoughts and fears and the knowledge that so many of his loved ones had died and here he remained, captive but alive.

“Ah,” Loki said, looking away. Thor’s grief was a foreign thing to him, incomprehensible, and Loki found himself growing uncertain. Uncomfortable. He had been expecting anger; he knew how to react to the thunder god's rage. But not this, and it made a hollow open up in Loki's own chest, one he didn't know how to fill.

Thor drew his knees up, walls of silence enveloping him like a fortress.

Loki let him be, unsure of what else to do.

*

Years ago, around the time of Loki’s birth, this same conflict had been a war Jotunheim had lost. The old capital had been a ruin from which the royal family fled, along with all the servants that had survived the Aesir attacks. And at the time, among the king and queen’s employ had been a dim-witted serving girl, the sort who could not be relied upon to have a thought in her head beyond the dull songs that she hummed as she swept the cold flagstone floors.

The girl had been too stupid to realize that the tiny, wailing infant lying among the fallen stones had been left out on purpose, a sacrifice, and Loki can only imagine the dumb confusion that must have spread across her face as she held the baby to her bosom, covering him with her shawl so that he would be protected as the household fled. No one else had seen. No one had ever asked her what she was thinking.  

Nál. It seemed she had watched over him for nearly three years before anyone asked where Nál—a slightly dull servant girl who had never been seen tarrying with a man—had gotten a child. When the whole tale poured out of the idiot girl’s lips, though, Loki had been taken to the new palace and back to his parents. Or, rather, to the one parent who had survived the war.

Laufey, from his high throne, had declared it a miracle. He had said it must be the workings of the fates. Before the court he averred that the runt must have some purpose yet unseen.

That was Loki’s first memory, that tale.

“Though I haven’t seen the use of you yet,” Laufey often added to the end of it, coolly appraising, whenever others were not there to hear.

When the sorrows of defeat weighed on the land more heavily, there were worse things said; Loki had been a sacrifice for victory, yet he had lived. He remembered standing obediently, listening to his father's cold hatred and wishing he were anyone else, swaying on his feet at the words that came like blows.

Later, he had found a way to make himself useful at last. He had learned to do the things that no one else would do, until he was sure he must have earned his life.

By now, he thought, he must have earned it several times over.

*

“My patience wears thin,” Laufey’s latest missive to him had said: the war was nearly over, or it should have been. The word still traveled that Odin had escaped, and no one knew what had become of Thor, so the Asgardians fought on, weak and leaderless but nuisances still. It was now, certainly, the time for the display of mastery over the captive Aesir prince to demoralize all his people.

Loki felt no compunction in sending back the message that the task was not finished; the storm god was still unbroken, and Laufey would have to wait. He knew Laufey would be disappointed with his failure, but for once he did not care.

For some reason, the thought of his father parading a dull-eyed Thor through the streets of Jotunheim in chains disagreed with him.

*


	3. Chapter 3

_The Prisoner’s Paradox _

Inexplicably, in skirmishes no longer between companies and regiments but with sparse bands of rabble in the Asgardian woods and vales, the war dragged on. Months passed.

In those months, Thor learned a strange little truth: it was possible to be a prisoner and remain unbroken. It was possible to be a prisoner and remain unchanged. It was not possible, however, to be a prisoner and remain wholly insensitive to one’s captor.

This was only practical.

He could remember wondering if this miniature prince who stayed back from the battle was a coward, some fragile-boned Jotun doll kept by an indulgent house, but had since learned that it was not like that at all. The truth was far more frightening. The better he got to know Loki, the more he began to believe that he was a monster. Only not at all the kind in Thor’s old nursemaid’s tales.

Days passed, and as often as not Thor was left mostly alone, brought meals by the same fearful servants who looked at him with an odd dread. He tried to speak to them a few times, when Loki was away, but they stared at him as mute and wide-eyed as startled deer, and he was able to learn nothing to his benefit. He tried to plan escape, but he was aware deep inside that these were only idle dreams, for he did not know where he was, and Jotunheim would not be kind to a lost Asgardian wandering frantic and desperate in its frozen wastes. He did not give up hope, but he had little to pin it on, and he began to feel adrift.

Nighttime was different, for Loki would inevitably return from whatever duties he attended to during the day. And then the nightly ritual would begin.

Thor had gotten used to it. Loki had taken him enough times that his body had become inured and he could bear the invasion without pain, and he no longer feared actually dying of shame from the other things that Loki did to him or from the way his flesh responded. But still he resisted, no matter how many times it was done, for his own peace of mind in this imprisonment. He was unwilling to relinquish his right to struggle, to refuse the attentions of a monster, even if it did no good in the end.

The Jotun prince also still ignored his protests—or enjoyed them, taking casual pleasure in overpowering him.

But afterward, after the physical part, Loki craved conversation. That was also part of the ritual. With Thor held by unbreakable chains, the warm blur of forced pleasure making him sluggish and slow, Loki sat on the pallet with him and petted his flank in a way that should have infuriated Thor. Did infuriate him. But Thor listened when Loki began to speak.

It had started with news of the war and with strange little questions about Thor’s life, but it had changed over time. By sheer repetition it had become ordinary. And as Thor adjusted to his situation and began to listen with something approaching true interest (for lack of any other company), Loki had begun to speak to him of more and more intimate things. Almost as if Loki trusted him. Or had no one else to speak to.

One night, the Jotun prince told Thor the tale of his birth, of being abandoned as an infant and then mistakenly rescued.

“Nál was killed later, of course,” Loki added, “when everyone had forgotten about her.”

That cold pronouncement was the end of the tale, apparently, and Thor found himself studying his captor’s face, discomfort heavy in his belly.

“But she had saved you.”

Loki smiled darkly. “Yes, I rather think that was why.”

“Does it not bother you?” Thor asked.

“Should it?” Loki sounded honestly curious, yet Thor caught himself tensing unconsciously.

He did not _want_ to care that Loki was slipping into a dark mood. He did not _want_ to have grown so adept at seeing beneath the mask—Loki was near impossible to read, the same little smile showing viciousness and pleasure and anger alike, his dark, expressive eyes expressing whatever he wanted those around him to see rather than what he truly felt. But Thor had to care; as a prisoner, he had no choice. These things were the sun and the moon and the weather of his world, not to be ignored.

He did not have to react to them, though, and he shut his mouth and pretended not to notice when Loki got up to pace, ending up minutes later by his cabinet.

Loki stalked back, a bottle of the now-familiar warming liquor in his hand. “Drink with me,” he demanded.

Thor shrugged and accepted the glass.

Often such a thing would have led back to the bed, for the Jotun prince sometimes still played a game of seeking Thor’s submission through intoxication. This time, though, it ended with Loki sacked out drunk on it alone and Thor—comparatively sober—eyeing him.

“Tell me more of the tales from your childhood,” Loki slurred. “The ones about the fearsome giants of Jotunheim.”

As Thor stared, Loki gave a drunken laugh like liquid silver.

“Please? You sound so sincere when you say it, when you call me a monster.” Loki’s face was mashed against the heel of his hand on the pillow, muffling the words. “It pleases me to hear it.”

Thor also hated that he could not help but feel for him, just a little.  

*

_A Premature Prediction _

Thor woke in the same bed of white furs in which he had slept for months, but this time he woke to find Loki sitting over him looking grim.

“It’s over now.”

Thor blinked and yawned, confused. The war, from what Loki had told him, had been over for some time. Asgard had fallen. Jotunheim had won and now controlled the seat of all the realms. 

But Loki’s voice droned on. “You are the last of your line. Your brothers were all slain in battle some time ago, but word has come to me that Odin has been found at last, in a cave attended only by darkness. And he has fallen. So you are the last.”

Thor felt cold creeping over him.

 “Laufey won’t wish to delay any more in dealing with you, under the circumstances. He will carry your head through the streets—by your lovely golden hair, like this—so everyone will know that we are free of the yoke of Aesir oppression forever. Even if you can’t be broken, storm god, you can be killed. They will come for you in the morning.”

Loki’s eyes were dark, and Thor tried to breathe through the sudden clenching numbness.

“So how about let’s have you one more time, while we can?” Loki added, his voice shy. Almost apologetic.

Loki loosened his belt, tugged down Thor’s breeches, slipped between his knees while Thor was still gaping at him. Thor had never submitted, never stopped fighting, and he had never been as angry as he was now as Loki pushed him onto his back and took him in a stroke.

“Bite and I will make you regret it,” Loki warned just before he kissed him, a deep kiss, tongue delving hot into the cavern of Thor’s mouth, his lips sucking at Thor’s almost tenderly. Almost like a lover. With surprise, Thor realized it was the first time Loki had ever kissed him.  

This only made Thor more furious, but he didn’t bite and he didn’t struggle. He squeezed his eyes shut and protested only in his passive silence.

Loki pretended not to notice. Thor could feel his captor's lust as if it were honey dripping over him, sticky and warm; Loki curled over him and touched him everywhere, stroking and caressing, sliding full against him and sighing at the feeling. Thor could feel his captor's racing heartbeat through the cage of his ribs.

“I want you to know how much I've enjoyed having you here with me,” Loki told him between long, penetrating kisses. “I think I've enjoyed it more than anything else in my life, and I will miss you terribly. If it were up to me, I'd keep you forever.”

Thor did not let himself answer; he would not sound as if he were begging to be spared, not after all this time.

But after all this time, Loki knew his body well, and when he reached to loosen the chains a little more, to hook Thor’s knees over his arms and drag their bodies together, the sensation overcame his resistance. A gasp slipped out.

Loki nodded. “Yes, Thor. It’s all right to enjoy it. It’s the last time.”

It had been a long time since anything Loki did to him was able to make him blush, but Thor's cheeks grew hot at that, and more when Loki began to take him harder, faster, with enough force for Thor at last to come with a stifled moan.

Loki's breath hitched at the feel of Thor's spill spurting out between them, and he kissed Thor again hard as he followed, hips jerking.

When, panting and sweaty, Loki sank down on top of him, Thor thought for a moment that he would fall asleep there, and then at least Thor could strangle him as his last act. But instead Loki caught his breath, gave Thor a disgustingly wet, sloppy kiss on the nose (he laughed as Thor grimaced), and then stumbled to his bed, where he did fall quickly into slumber.

Thor didn’t move.

Thor didn’t move for quite some time, lest his chains jangle and wake his captor.

Loki had left the slack loose in the chains. Every night for all these months he had reeled it in, but this time he had forgotten, and Thor could see the key glinting on Loki’s desk. He was sure it was within his reach, if he could only get it into his hand without a sound.

It was not until Thor had the blade pressed firmly to his captor’s pale neck that Loki’s eyes opened again, looking up at the angry storm god unchained above him. The satisfaction in those eyes made Thor wonder, though, if he had been asleep at all.

“Go ahead,” Loki whispered, fearless.

But Thor had thought of that already.

“If I do that, I will never make it out of Jotunheim. I will probably never make it out of the palace. You will help me,” Thor said.

Loki gazed back. “But why would I do as you say? And how would you trust me if I did?”

Thor ignored this. “You _will_ help me,” he insisted, “or I will make you regret it.”

This time the Jotun prince nodded acquiescence as he grinned.

*

_ Escape, Assisted  _

Now that the war was over, getting out of Jotunheim was easy. There was free passage over the Bifrost, and on all other roads so many frost giants were traveling to and fro that one or two more would never be noticed.

Or, at least, it was easy if one was a Jotun. And not a runty Jotun prince, if one had a choice about it.

Thor, in amazement, ran his hands down his torso. He had not, in all his months imprisoned, truly understood that his captor was a sorcerer. He had heard it said, and he had seen a few little parlor tricks from him, but until he looked into the mirror and saw a brute-faced giant staring back he hadn’t really known. Somehow, he had been turned taller, more massive; it was not just an illusion, for what he touched was solid. And Loki had done the same to himself.

A short while later, what were by all appearances two ordinary palace workers took two large, scaly mounts from the stables and slipped away.

_Bad Company _

As they rode, Loki began to feel oddly free. Thor had kept hold of his knives, refusing to go weaponless though certainly not trusting Loki with them, but this didn’t worry him much.

When night fell and they stopped out in the open under the stars, Loki spread out his blanket next to Thor’s.

“It’s a week’s journey at least,” he said, watching the storm god scowl at him when he got too close. “Are you sure you’ll be able to stand my company that long?”

Thor lay back then and stared at the sky. “If you touch me, I will kill you.”

Loki chuckled, eyebrow raised. “Aren’t you supposed to be threatening me not to try to run away from you, rather, now that I am your prisoner?”

“Do not run away,” Thor added blandly.

“That’s better,” Loki replied with a grin.

But because Loki could never resist a challenge, after waking in the middle of the night to answer a call of nature, he returned to his blanket and peered over at Thor’s sleeping face… and rolled closer, hand sneaking under Thor’s blanket—

The scuffle enveloped him before he knew it had begun. Elbows and knees, things from the ground snagging and catching in his hair. Thor cursed and Loki laughed, and they tumbled over each other again and again. Loki was quick and could twist his body like a snake, but Thor’s fists slammed against his kidneys, cracked against his face. He felt the blood trickling every which way as they rolled; he struck back, kicking, and Thor roared. It went on until there came a final breathless, dizzying, hard-bone thump. It ended with Thor’s hands on his throat from above, pinning him violently, shoving him against the ground once or twice more as if he couldn’t quite decide whether he wanted to choke him or batter him.

Thor spat fire.  “Did you not hear me tell you I would kill you if you touched me again? Did you not hear me?”

Loki gave his best fake sheepish smile, feeling the blood beginning to congeal beneath his nose. “My humblest apologies, storm god. Force of habit.”

Thor did eventually let go, thrusting Loki backward and scrambling to his feet to be farther away, then dragging his blankets several arms’ lengths from Loki’s bedding before settling back down with a weary huff.

Loki, too, lay back down. And he decided to let Thor sleep unmolested the rest of the night, though he gazed over fondly under the moonlight until sleep took them both.

*

They rode through the next day, and the next, and Thor began to feel steadier.

At first he had avoided the thought of his father and his family, needing to focus on practical concerns, but now he let the loss sink into the pit of his stomach like a heavy stone. It was grief, but a grief that meant all responsibility fell to him to save their realm. The duty to the Asgardian people was now wholly his, and that meant he had no time to indulge his sorrow.

He also grew surer in the presence of his former captor. The Jotun prince had not provoked him since the first night, and the farther they got from the palace—from the chamber in which Thor had been his bed-slave for months, to the point where he had begun to fall into the rhythm of Loki’s moods as a beast adapts to the seasons—and the more time passed, the more Thor felt that he was coming back to himself.

Loki seemed smaller, his whims less important. Thor no longer had any reason to fear him. Yet he was just as incomprehensible, and perhaps in that he seemed more frightening, in a strange way: it was quite clear by then that Loki had come willingly—even if Thor had freed himself on his own, Loki had chosen to put up no fight at all. Yet Thor saw in him no hint of a motive to betray him later. He remembered the tale Loki had once told him of dead Nál, of an abandoned child rescued and returned, and he wondered if Loki had any loyalties at all.

And with the life he’d had, did that make him more or less of a monster?

Loki had also proved forthcoming with what he knew about how things stood in Asgard now.

“Oh yes, you’ll need me more once we arrive,” he grinned. “Apparently Laufey gave the administration of your realm to one of my brothers, making _him_ suffer the climate. He’ll have brought plenty of warriors around him and will be keeping a sharp eye for rebellion.”

Brothers? Thor thought with a grunt. He had not known. Though he should have guessed, really; not even the sickliest heir would be thrown away, but it was not so with a later child.

“Of course,” Loki continued, “Helblindi is not well-suited for ‘sharp.’ So you should have a chance. And I have thought up a plan for you, if you haven’t.”

Thor looked warily at him. The Jotun prince sounded almost eager for him to succeed, and Thor knew that none of this was because he had put a knife to the little giant’s throat and threatened him.

“A plan?”

Loki shrugged. “You’ll need one. _You_ may have never been broken, but your people are. Their royal house has been smashed to pieces. Their armies lie slain and unburied in their own bloody ruin. Their fields are burned and fallow. Worst of all, they are under the thumb of monsters and they have lost all hope. It will take more than your sudden and glorious return to rally them, if you were imagining that.”

He said this as they rode, almost idly, staring out at the horizon. And Thor waited for several minutes in the swelling silence that followed.

“So?” he said at last. “Your plan?”

“Clearly, you’ll have to give them a victory to show them that triumph is still within their reach.”

The horizon drew no closer, but shadows slowly appeared upon it, growing up into the little settlements that form around the bridge’s landing in every realm it touches. Thor’s anticipation grew into a twinge in his belly.

“And why are you willing to give me a plan that involves my victory over _your_ people, frost prince?” Thor asked.

Loki looked at him steadily for a moment, then broke into an enigmatic grin. “Oh, son of Odin, _that_ you will just have to wait and find out, won't you?”

*

_The Rebellion _

The rebellion began two weeks later, on the fields of Folkvangr. In that time they had traversed the city of Asgard and the lands around, and Thor had seen the truth of Loki’s dire predictions. He had also spoken to the people where he could find them in small, uncowed gatherings amidst the rubble and shadow of their defeat, and he had told them to prepare themselves, to gather their weapons and their courage. Everywhere they went, eyes lit up at the sight of him… but not enough. Never enough. The hunger and exhaustion and loss were always stronger and brighter.

For this part of their mission, Loki had removed their brute-Jotun glamours, and he had instead disguised himself as an As—just the sight of a giant was enough to cause far too many Asgardians now to cast down their eyes and bow their shoulders, and Norns forbid Loki be recognized as a Jotun prince in Thor’s company.

But he did not behave as an Asgardian, at least not in private. He asked the strangest little questions of Thor’s home realm, never letting Thor forget what he really was. And of course, Thor never trusted him. Not even for an instant.

A few evenings before the appointed day, as the two sat in a small back room in an inn, he had sprawled on the bed—he still looked at these common surroundings with distaste and used them carelessly, one used to taking whatever he wanted—but with his gaze fixed on Thor.

There was only one bed. Thor had decided to sleep in the chair and not fight Loki for it.

“I’m looking forward to seeing you fight, storm god,” Loki had mused, head on his arm and voice rising in the dimness as they both prepared to bed down for the night. “Before I ever saw you, I wanted that. I’d heard the stories coming back from the battles; our men hated you so fiercely for how many of us you’d slain, how effortlessly. Every inch a god. You sounded glorious to me; that was why I had to have you for myself. But I would have liked to see you in battle.”

Thor said nothing in reply. Loki had told him the same thing once before, but he had thought it nothing more than a taunt then. He had not believed it was an honest sentiment.

“What a pity, though, that your people show little of that same spirit,” Loki added.

Thor’s brow scrunched in insult at the disparagement against his people. And Loki’s admiration of him discomfited him in deep ways that made his skin crawl. He held himself in check, telling himself that he did still need Loki, as distasteful as the thought was.

Yet when he woke a couple hours later with an ache in his back from sleeping hunched in the rickety chair, he found himself getting to his feet and going over to lie down in the empty space on one side of the bed. It was only for the sake of his joints, he told himself. He needed decent sleep as well, all the more because in only a few days' time he would have little opportunity for any. And the Jotun prince was deep in dreams by now.

Thor decided he could rest beside a monster, just for a little while.

*

The fields of Folkvangr stood just beyond the palace walls, and the rebellion began, precisely, on the tree-crowned hill at the nearer side, the slope of which spread out like a stage. It began just as the morning mists were burning off under Asgard’s sun, and as the last of Asgard’s once-bold folk stepped tentatively upon the green, uncertain what they would see. Everyone had heard that the crown prince, the only one of Odin’s sons still alive, had returned, and that he had set the time and the place for their uprising, moving among them in secret.

But caution kept the hush in place, hanging over the gathering crowd, all chill with damp and doubt.

As they waited under the shadow of the trees, Loki peered out at the milling folk, and his heart thudded with excitement at the knowledge that soon all out there would be chaos. Thrills raced up and down each nerve in his body. Nausea threatened to choke him.

He had belatedly realized there was a flaw in his plan: he was going to grant Thor a victory, stealing it straight out of Laufey’s hands and ruining everything. That was the crux of the plan, the center of it, the entire point. And it was also the critical flaw.

Loki stared out at the crowd, an acid hollow in his belly, all empty pain. The flaw in the plan was the part he would play in that victory.

Some little part of him whispered: he could still flee. He did not have to go through with it. 

His nails cut his palms as he held himself still. He wanted this more.

He had always wanted this. All his life had been lived for this chance, ever since the first time he'd understood.

Before he could hesitate another moment he went over to where Thor stood preparing, and told him the final pieces.

*

 _If you are to rally them, you will need a victory. Not at the end of the day. Now. And you have one within your reach._ _Me. Tell them what I did to you. Tell them. Then do it. Show them that the enemy can be defeated. Do it for your child-self who feared being gobbled up by a monster with a taste for godflesh. Do it, and tell them it is Laufey’s son who falls by your hand. Do it._

_It's not as if I could walk out of here alive, now, simply sneak back to Jotunheim after this. I'm done for even if you don't do it. Someone else will._

_Do you not understand? I do not care about anything else. I do not want Laufey to win. And I knew from the start what you could do. I told you I wanted to see you fight._

_So do it. Take the victory I offer. Just promise me you will kill as many of my kin as you can._

_I do this—I have done_ all this, to you— _to destroy them. Take your vengeance, and give me mine._

Loki’s voice was steady until the very last words.

*

Thor had already readied himself for the battle, anger and anticipation surging up within him. He'd been preparing himself for that since the day they set foot back in Asgard. But confusion swept over him as he listened to his former captor’s words.

"You want me to kill you?" he stammered. Of course he had slain countless giants in battle, but this was different. It would not be in the heat of battle but in the coldness of hatred. Loki was asking Thor to _execute_ him.

Loki stared back at him, defiant. "You heard me."

This was the same monster who had tormented him for so long. So many times Thor had lain chained beside Loki's bed and loathed him with every part of his being, lain there dreaming of a home that felt so distant he'd wept secretly against his folded arms. And now he was home again, and that monster was telling him how to save it.

And for all he had endured at this monster's hands...

Thor felt it like a rush of icy-cold water, like a flood over him and through him, and he felt himself nodding.

Loki, his eyes dark and mad and anxious, gave him a little smile in return.

*

_It is always fascinating to hear your tales of monsters._

*

The rebellion began on the plains of Folkvangr, when Thor—prince of the Aesir, mighty warrior, god of storms, and the last son of Odin’s line—stood before the final ranks of Asgard, unbroken and shining in the dawning sun, and revealed the Jotun prince who had been his captor.

He thrust the man forward for all to see, and Loki feigned to struggle in his grasp. In the moment of a caught breath he unsheathed the blade. The throat under his hand fluttered. The flesh trembled. Yet to those on the fields below Thor did not appear to hesitate.

The people saw the monster fall before the vengeance of Asgard, yanked onto the glint of silver. Hands clenching futilely as he fell. The monster, slain, at the feet of their prince—their king.

A great cry went up in that moment, and they all followed where the god of thunder led, as the storm came down and embroiled the realm and melted ice away in its ire.

It was there that the rebellion was begun.

Through it, Thor, the last son of Odin, the warrior thought fallen, the embodiment of the storm’s long-quashed rage, the prince who had never been broken, led them all to victory. To glory. And none saw anything but grim triumph on his face. There was no glint in his eyes to speak of anything else—and the Jotun prince lay on the hilltop, sprawled limp and still in a pool of his own blood, his purpose served at last.

Thor led his people to a victory in thunder, in storm, under skies riven with lightning.

The Jotnar were driven finally from the realm, and Asgard was free.

*

At the end of that road, Thor returned home.

Work had already begun to repair the ruined palace, and the Asgardian people, though their hardships were many, were swift at rebuilding. They delighted in it as if it were a kind of celebration. A celebration of survival, for what is broken can be remade, as long as there is life.

There was one undamaged balcony, and that was where Thor stood his first night home, gazing out. And though he had still to mourn for many losses both vast and personal, that night he allowed himself contentment, like a deep breath at last.

What is broken can be remade, he thought.

“My king?” There came a voice from behind, the soft sound of footsteps, the rustle of a deep bow. Thor turned to see a servant waiting respectfully for his attention.

“Yes?”

“Your bedchamber has been made ready, as you requested.”

Thor nodded, the first twinge of apprehension striking him and lighting up and down his form like a whisper. His first night truly _home_ , in his own bed, but instead of peace he had sensations out of memory. A burning warmth in his belly. The softness of fur on his skin against the cold, and shackles on his limbs. It would be some time before he could forget that. But perhaps just as long before he could forget the feeling of his once-captor’s trembling throat in his hand. The smell of Loki’s blood pouring out, the fear that had sprung into those dark eyes at the last moment. His own bloodthirst, his pleasure at avenging himself for everything that had been done to him.

Loki had been a monster. But broken as well.

“The healers have been watching over him. They expect him to wake within the hour,” the servant added.

Thor nodded again and dismissed the man with a word of gratitude, still leaning on the balcony and looking out over his scarred land, simply letting himself breathe.

A few minutes more and he would go.

*

_Turnabout Is Fair Play _

The clink of chains.

That was the sound that Loki woke to, and if it had not been for that sound he would not have guessed he was alive. As it was, it was likely the most uncertain moment of his life. But he pieced it together.

The sweet heat in the unfamiliar air. The stinging, bandaged wound in his flank, a cut deep enough that it was surely a wonder that he _hadn’t_ died, the pain turning the world suddenly black—ahh, but the moment before, that had been a delight. Loki had taken on a curious detachment and watched the Aesir prince screw up the will to do him in, a little knot of enjoyment in his belly beneath the nervous mire of his body’s impulse to run, to fight. He had loved tormenting the man since their very first meeting, seeing just how much outrage that powerful body could muster. The final bit of conflict as he resolved to do what he had to do was nearly as good. He had taken that as his final consolation.

Loki had never expected to open his eyes again.

He had expected even less to waken like this, and slowly he understood exactly what position he was in: he felt the heaviness of the shackles on his arms and feet, and his eyes adjusted to the dim light to find that he lay on a low pallet beside a large and princely bed.

It all seemed quite familiar. The thunder god had saved him and brought him—

Laughing made his wound ache but Loki could not stop himself, laughing low and convulsive. He laughed until his throat hurt, wondering why he felt like he was finally home, laughed until wetness ran down his temples as well.

And he waited for his captor to return.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, that's it! Thank you all so much for reading and I hope the end was satisfying. All feedback is adored!


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